Perhaps marking one of the most important milestones they've ever had, BlackBerry maker RIM held its long-anticipated BlackBerry Experience event today in Manhattan. As promised, the company unveiled its two newest BlackBerry phones, the BB10-powered Z10 and Q10 handsets.

But what's really got the mobile industry bubbling is the Z10, since it's the first ever BlackBerry phone without a physical QWERTY keyboard. "Gone is the impish keyboard, loved and loathed alike, to be replaced by the now ubiquitous display," writes the Huffington post, with one of their live bloggers at the event adding, "The handset looks impressive for the company's first major foray into the keyboard-less phone area."

After a few years lagging behind the likes of Android and Apple, BlackBerry 10 is being lauded as "RIM's latest, best comeback attempt," (BusinessWeek) and its star attraction is this glossy, sleek, new all touch phone. Oh, and by the way, it's not RIM anymore, it's just BlackBerry.

So, what, exactly was revealed today about the Z10, BlackBerry's great new hope?

For starters, its display has better resolution than that of the iPhone 5 (1280 x 768 vs. 1136 x 640.) Slim and sleek, it sports a 4.2" screen and boasts textured surface that's easy to grip feels good in hand.

And, as though to completely demolish the perception that BlackBerry's all about keypads and physical buttons, the new Z10 heavily stresses swiping rather than button pushing. You don't even have to push a button to turn it on, just swipe up!

But one of the best features of BB10, which applies to both the Z10 and QWERTY-touch Q10 phones, is the way it lets the user manage apps. All apps are integrated into the BlackBerry 10 "hub," so that app notifications and emails are easily accessed with a single swipe, even when another app is open. "You are only one swipe away from the heart of your activities," said CEO Thorsten Heins of this new innovation.

Already, the Z10 has been praised as "striking," "powerful," and "beautiful." And from what we've seen, we at Pure Mobile have to agree. Of course, the phone will only become available in the U.S. as of March. But if you're as excited as we are, hold tight, because we're already lining up accessories for BlackBerry Z10 in time for its release.

BlackBerry's new BB10 phones, among them L-Series, were heavily leaked this week

So, there's still two weeks to go until BlackBerry officially unveils their two new BB10 phones, but after this week, is there really anything to show that we haven't already seen? Both the all-touch L-Series phone – also known as the Z10 – and their Qwerty/touch X10 popped up in leaks all over the place, leaving little to the imagination before the big reveal.

For starters, there was what Gizmodo called "the clearest shots yet of BlackBerry's great Qwerty hope," referring of course to the X10. Though there's only so much a picture can say about a device, the N-Series phone looks like a slicker, more modern update to the "conservative simplicity" that RIM's always excelled at, says Gizmodo.

As for the L-Series, we've already seen our fair share of pictures of the new all-touch BlackBerry phone, but this week revealed a couple of juicy details that were new to us at least.

A pretty thorough video demonstration of the Z10 and its features was posted online by German site TelekomPresse, and you can view it at the end of this post.

But just in case you were still hungry for hard facts, a leaked Rogers training manual – slides of which were secured by Techradar – has been making the rounds, revealing the actual specs behind BlackBerry's first all-touch phone.

If the leak is to be trusted, the L-Series will sport a 4.2" high-def screen (1200 x 768 pixels), an 8 MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera. It features 2GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, and will be powered by a Snapdragon processor.

Now, all that remains is to learn the release date for the new BlackBerry phones, which we should find out at RIM's BB10 event, scheduled for January 30.

It's that, for so many, the draw of BlackBerry is its signature Qwerty keypad, something RIM has done away with in their upcoming all-touch device – or have they?

Actually, judging from a new hands-on video detailing the new BB10 touch keyboard, and according to Gizmodo, the "BlackBerry 10 touch screen keys could rival even its traditional keyboards."

For starters, RIM's made the transition from physical keyboards to all touch keys pretty seamless. As Blackberry's Head of Software Portfolio Vivek Bhardwaj explains in the demo video, the keypad of the new L-Series device has stayed true to the look of traditional BlackBerry keyboards, right down to the signature "frets." So it looks and feels like the blackBerry devices you're used to.

Where it does differ from the original is that the new touch keyboard is more intuitive and intelligent than its predecessor. It automatically separates words when you forget to hit the space bar, it understands context, learns your personal vocabulary, and knows when to switch between languages.

A couple of days ago, we posted a teaser image released by RIM of the upcoming BlackBerry 10 all-touch device on Pure Mobile's Canadian blog. At the time, it seemed exciting, the first real glimpse of the L-Series, not just some bogus leak. And it confirmed that images of the device leaked previously weren't really the real deal.

But what a difference two days make. Thanks to super detailed pictures and a lengthy video leaked by Vietnamese site Tinhte.ve, the RIM-sanctioned teaser pic of the L-Series now looks "lame" by comparison, to quote TechCrunch.

While the teaser pic had left us wanting more, the Tihnte.ve leak gave us pretty much a full showing of BlackBerry newest, and perhaps sexiest, smartphone. Of course, that's assuming the handset shown off in their 5-minute video and high-res pics is the final design, but we have very good reason to believe that's the case.

The device shown in the leak sports the same textured back as the the L-Series does in RIM's official teaser pic

First off, it's got the same mesh-textured backing we saw in the L-Series the teaser pic, and which was lacking from BlackBerry devices in previous leaks. Meanwhile, says TechCrunch, if it isn't the final design, it's at least "very recent," since the handset is equipped with "the recently-renamed BlackBerry World App."

So what's the scoop? We couldn't help but notice – and these feelings were confirmed by Gizmodo – that the device looks a heck of a lot like the iPhone 5 in some shots, though it's perhaps a little bit slimmer, proportionally. Though its rounded rectangular shape is also not unlike the BlackBerry London pics we started seeing over a year ago.

But it's also not far off from the BlackBerry Dev Alpha B smartphone handed out to developers last year, in that the placement of its front-facing camera, front speaker, microphone, and BlackBerry logo are more or less the same. With the removable back panel off, it reveals an 1,800 mAh battery, and microUSB, micro-HDMI, and microSD slots.

Opinions on BlackBerry's latest and greatest, though perhaps premature, are certainly abundant, ranging from ravingly enthusiastic to underwhelmed. "This is going to blow the iPhone out of the water," "Go home Blackberry, you're drunk and dead in the water, it's an Android and iOS world now," are just a sampling of the responses found in the comments for the Tinhte video.

For our part, we're waiting to get more details on the real guts of the device, and to see how it works with the new BB10 OS when BlackBerry officially unveils it on January 30. But in the meantime, we're giving it the benefit of the doubt and hoping it'll be the best smartphone BlackBerry's made in years, or at least good enough to pull RIM out of its recent troubles.

Hot off the presses, that's how we like our news at Pure Mobile. And it doesn't get much fresher than this: About an hour ago, BlackBerry maker RIM officially announced the launch event for their long-awaited new OS, BB10.

A couple of months ago, after postponing the release of BB10, RIM had simply alluded to a rescheduled launch date in early 2013. But we now know the event will go off January 30, simultaneously across several locations worldwide.

To go with the launch of BB10, RIM has also promised something many of us have been anticipating even more than the OS itself – two new BlackBerry smartphones that run on BB10.

Still from a video leaking BlackBerry's two new BB10 handsets

The devices have already significantly leaked in video and pictures, indicating that while one of the BlackBerry smartphones will have the company's signature Qwerty keypad, the other will be BlackBerry's first all-touch smartphone. Rumor aside, however, we'll actually get to see the real deal come January 30, when RIM promises "details of the smartphones and their availability will be announced."

As TechCrunch notes, because we've all had a chance to get familiar with the new smartphones' software (albeit through leaks), we can expect not only the availability for the devices but pricing as well.

We’d heard back in April that RIM, the manufacturer of the BlackBerry smartphones including the Bold Touch 9900, Bold 9790 and Curve 9360 as well as the Playbook tablet - had planned a new round of employee layoffs, this in addition to the 2,000 employees who have already lost their jobs this year.

Ironically, the new layoffs have begun almost one year to the day that The Waterloo Record reported last year’s RIM layoffs that were necessary to cut costs. In this new round, RIM plans to lay off at least 10% of its global workforce.

RIM is pinning most of its hopes for a future on the BlackBerry 10 smartphone, but until that phone is on the market, RIM’s sales are going to continue to languish. In a recent interview with The Waterloo Record, a RIM spokesperson revealed this: “RIM has committed to achieving significant efficiencies and operating cost reductions over the course of this fiscal year. Our financial target is to drive at least $1 billion in savings by the end of fiscal 2013. Headcount reductions are part of this initiative.”

Rim’s spokesperson said the current round of job reductions could see as many as 6,000 cuts as RIM tries to achieve $1 billion in savings by the end of fiscal 2013.

At the company’s annual conference this week RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins officially confirmed the launch of a Blackberry PlayBook 4G LTE planned for later this year.

According to a report from Canadian Reviewer, the new tablet will be equipped with a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor and a near-field communication chip. The article also indicated that the new tablet will support HTML 5 and Adobe Flash. It look similar to the current BlackBerry PlayBook.

RIM has some making up to do with its market since the PlayBook has been a sore point for RIM since its launch in May 2011. Its sales have slow and reviews are lukewarm. RIM is trying to improve things. An update in February added new features such as a native e-mail client and additional ways for interaction between the BlackBerry phone and the PlayBook tablet.

RIM’s 4G LTE PlayBook could be a way to challenge Apple tablet, such as the iPad 2, and iPad 3 hold on the enterprise market. This is one market that RIM has been doing well.

The following is a complete specification list for the BlackBerry Playbook 4G LTE

Google’s Android is now the leading OS platform with 51% of the market. According to a recent MobiLens quarterly survey of mobile subscribers, Android use is growing at almost four times the rate of its closest competitor Apple, that services 30.7% of consumers with their iOS.

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Android’s increase of 3.7% outpaces Apple’s mere 1% to give it the majority of the market. The increase for both of these companies comes at the expense of RIM that dropped 3.7% to 12.3% and Microsoft that registered a 0.8% decrease to 3.9% of the smartphone market. While Symbian held its ground at 1.4%.

These number reflect changes in market share since the poll was done in December 2011.

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Google won’t be celebrating a long term victory just yet. Both Microsoft’s Windows 8 and RIM’s Blackberry 10 are due for release in the fall, but are already plagued by negative opinions. The rumor that Microsoft’s new platform might not support the current hardware lineup has sent a ripple of anger and confusion through the Windows Phone community.

BlackBerry 10 may be the best OS version RIM has ever produced, and it’s telling this to the world right now. But at little more than 12% of the current market and a plethora of technical criticism about its lack of gadgets and apps, Blackberry has a lot of PR ahead.

Unless Microsoft and RIM take the market by surprise, it looks like Google and Apple are going to battle it out with each other and continue to eat up their minor competitors’ markets.

A recent CTO presentation I attended addressed the changing security landscape we are facing with consumerization - what I deem to be… (choice of our own devices for corporate and personal use from our smartphones to our tablets. This brought up the pros and cons of the various operating systems out there: iOS, Research In Motion, Android and Windows. The graphic associated with the Apple slide was a glass biosphere that was thriving and completely self-contained – the perfectly controlled environment.

This closed environment comes at a price: consumers have little control over their OS and the possibility of customizing to their needs. Requests for changes and customer gripes are eventually addressed. iPhone users now have MMS, multitasking, copy and paste and a full list of other revisions that also make our tablets and media players better. Unfortunately, one issue they haven’t fixed is control over alerts.

Just imagine an area in settings where custom alerts could be set. Different profile modes where the choice of ring, vibrate, volume, and ringtones can be chosen. Apple could take a page out of RIM’s book; BlackBerry cell phones have long had this kind of alert controls. And, there is room for improvement that could include location-based profile alerts (example, goes to silent in movie theatre) and the like. Perhaps hanit could connect in those settings to all devices on the platform including the iPad, iPhone, iPod, etc).

No matter if you’d like your Bluetooth turned off when you walk through the door at night or have different rings and notifications based on who is calling or texting, iOS users should have a bit more flexibility with their high-end devices. Moving to an iPhone from RIM and Android was challenging and this writer is still baffled that the handset is simply either “on” or on “vibrate.”

Research In Motion certainly isn’t competing at the same level as Apple in terms of handsets, accessories and projected sales these days, but this is one area where the Canadian company trumps the iPhone capabilities.

Android. Apple. Apple. Android. The mobile OS brands and their respective handset manufacturers are in the grip of a fierce, cyclical competition to be the best and win global mindshare. Which is why we follow the momentum and progress of their sales and innovation so closely. So how did the vendors stack up against one another? The usual culprits are present: Apple’s iPhone 4S and Samsung’s Galaxy S 2.

OEM Market Share

For the three-month average period ending in December, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.3 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, followed by LG Mobile with 20 percent share and Motorola with 13.3 percent share. Apple continued to gain ground in the OEM market with 12.4 percent share of total mobile subscribers (up 2.2 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 6.7 percent share.

Smartphone Platform Market Share

97.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in December, representing 40 percent of all mobile subscribers. Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 47.3 percent market share, up 2.5 percentage points from September. Apple maintained its #2 position, growing 2.2 percentage points to 29.6 percent of the smartphone market. RIM ranked third with 16 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.7 percent) and Symbian (1.4 percent).

According to the another market research firm, The NPD Group, the top three best-selling smartphones in the United States of last quarter all came from Apple: the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4, and the iPhone 3GS (which consumers can receive at no cost when signing a contract at AT&T). Two of Samsung’s flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S II made the top 5 list as well. The availability of some of these handsets as unlocked devices likely contributed to their success as well.

When diving into the details of this buying behavior, NPD analyst, Ross Rubin, noted that customers are motivated by “a fast processor, improved camera and the Siri speech-driven agent, most iPhone buyers paid a premium for the iPhone 4S, making is the top-selling handset in Q4.” In fact, the latest iPhone 4S outsold its predecessor by a whopping 75% and lapped the iPhone 3GS by a ratio of five to one. Throw in an OS that ties in the number one selling tablets in the world and customer get hooked.

When looking at the mobile OS platform of choice amongst first-time smartphone buyers, Android won out with 57% - Apple only saw 34% of those first time buyers choose their solution.

Much as there are solid tech reasons for Apple’s great performance with the iPhone 4S, NPD’s Rubin also outlines the rationale of Android’s growth and popularity amongst first-time buyers. “Android has been criticized for offering a more complex user experience than its competitors, but the company’s wide carrier support and large app selection is appealing to new smartphone customers,” Rubin noted. “Android’s support of LTE at Verizon has also made it the exclusive choice for customers who want to take advantage of that carrier’s fastest network.”